Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (Hitachi GST) has launched Travelstar 7K500, its fifth-generation, 7200 RPM mobile hard disk drive. The Hitachi Travelstar 7K500 is a 500GB, 2.5-inch, 3Gb/s SATA drive designed for notebooks, gaming systems and professional external storage systems.
Hitachi GST claims that the new drive delivers up to 56% higher capacity and 16% better application performance than its predecessor. It is also provides resistance to operating shocks and better power management capability.
Like the previous four generations of Travelstar, the new drive also comes with hardware-based Bulk Data Encryption (BDE) as an option. When the Hitachi BDE option is enabled, the hard drive will encrypt all data that comes from the system as it is written to the media. When read back, the drive decrypts the data so that it can be understood by the system.
The company added that since the hard drive is doing the encryption work, there is no impact on system performance. A Hitachi hard drive with BDE automatically encrypts data, so the system user never has to worry about whether or not the data is being protected.
According to the Hitachi GST, BDE also speeds up and simplifies the drive re-deployment process for commercial or corporate IT managers. By deleting the encryption key, the data is rendered unreadable, thereby eliminating the need for data-overwrite.
Travelstar 7K500 is compliant with the Trusted Computing Group’s Opal storage security specification, a new open standard designed to strengthen data protection and safeguard notebooks in the event of system loss or theft. The new product has been designed for energy efficiency with low power consumption at 0.69 watts idle power and 1.8 watts during read/write operations.
Travelstar 7K500 is being shipped in limited quantities to selected OEMs. Volume shipments will begin this month. Capacities include 120GB, 160GB, 250GB, 320GB and 500GB. Hitachi will offer an enhanced-availability (EA) version, available in 160GB to 500GB capacities in November. The EA version is reportedly designed for applications operating in lower transaction environments, such as blade servers, network routers and surveillance systems.
